Asha Rao is the Senior Director of Investments at the Bay Area office of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national nonprofit that serves as the connector between communities and the capital and relationships they need to access opportunity and generate wealth. The opportunity to be closer to the community building work and more embedded within it has broadened her understanding of what communities, particularly the Bay Area, need to prosper. Her hope is to lend her professional experience and voice as a woman of color together to the affordable housing and mission based lending community at large.